Avenue K
by Sabrina Empress of Insanity
Summary: Crackfic at its best: the cast of Kaleido Star does Avenue Q!
1. Scene One

Author's Note: If you know the musical Avenue Q, it makes this all the more amusing. If not, I highly recommend you check it out anyway, even though in theory you don't need it to get this fic. It's total insanity, crackfic at it's best! Enjoy! Oh, and while I've altered some of the lyrics, all songs in this are not mine, they're the composers and all that. Let's begin!

****

Scene One:  
What do you do with a Bunch of Homeless Street Musicians?

The streets of LA were gleaming in the sun...as much as they could gleam under the circumstances, it being LA and all. The waves were crashing in the distance, tourists pointed gleefully at stars walking by, and people chatted happily with their grocers and friends on the....

Wait, this was the good part of LA. Our story takes place far, far from here, in the multi-ethnic yet somehow still primarily white slums of Avenue K.

Striding cheerfully down the streets towards the building where our story is set was young Sora Naegino, pulling her pink suitcase along behind her with one hand and swinging the other back and forth, smiling brightly. As she walked, a sudden oboe soloist on the street woke up and began playing a little melody.

"What do you do with a BA in English?" Sora sang along philosophically, despite not having graduated high school yet even. "What is my life going to be? Four years of...two years of high school," she amended hastily, "and plenty of knowledge have earned me this useless degree..."

It is important to note here that a bachelor's in English in Japan is literally in English and therefore much more useful than and English degree in LA, but Sora didn't bother thinking of that, being swept up in the song as she was.

"I can't pay the bills yet, 'cuz I have no skills yet-" Here Sora did stop, as, conveniently, did the various street musicians that had been playing along. "But I do have skills. I'm going to be a Kaleido Star! Watch!"

She started to execute a rather impressive series of flips, but the musicians started back up again and she had to go on with the song.

"The world is a big scary plaaaace!" she continued, once more agreeing with the song. "But somehow I can't shake the feeling I might make a difference to the human race!"

Meanwhile, about two blocks up ahead, acoustics were assisting in bringing the sounds of the random street musicians to a small apartment complex. Outside, Ken Robbins was taking out his garbage when a hand snatched away the lid of the can and dropped it onto the head of a girl a good head taller than he was. Anna Heart scowled comically at him. "Oscar the Grouch," she growled.

"Nice try," Ken replied, and took the lid back. "Hi, Anna."

Anna's face fell, and she sighed. "Hi, Ken."

"How's life?" Ken asked, dropping his garbage in the can.

"Disappointing."

"Oh...I'm sorry to hear that. What's wrong?"

Anna shot him a look. "You have no sense of humor, that's what's wrong!"

"Sorry."

"You should be." Anna coughed, and looked away. "Well. Besides that, look at me! I'm sixteen years old, I'm at exactly the right age to be a great acrobat, and...meh."

"No," Ken asked remorsefully, feeling bad for not laughing earlier, "tell me."

"No." Anna didn't look at him. "You don't have a sense of humor, you wouldn't care anyway."

"No, come on!"

Anna sighed, and realized the music swell meant she had better start singing. "When I was little," she began awkwardly, "I thought I would be..."

"Tune, please?" Ken whispered.

Anna continued, shifting into the right key. "A big comedian on late night TV..."

"Close enough, I guess," Ken shrugged.

"But now I'm almost seventeen and as you can see I'm not."

"Nope." Ken shook his head.

Anna sighed. "Oh well."

"Yeah..."

"It sucks to be me."

"No," Ken dismissed.

"It sucks to be me," Anna insisted musically.

"No!"

"It sucks to be broke and unemployed and turning seventeen...it sucks to be me."

"Oh, you shouldn't think that," Ken reassured. "It's all fine. You have plenty of time."

The musicians seemed to psychically sense that young stage manager was far too optimistic to join in the song, so they quickly skipped ahead in the music, and on cue the sounds of arguing could be heard; one voice a young male tone snapping angrily, the other a high girl's voice dryly fighting back.

"...stuck up and full of himself, no, not _the_ great Yuri Killian, never, I wouldn't _dream_ of saying that!"

"Oh come on, you're a thousand times worse than me! I'm the world champion, every pay attention to me, extend my contract-'"

"Cute, Yuri, cute. You're how old again?"

"Oh, quit acting so old, you're not that mature yourself, Rosetta."

"Compared to you, I'm decrepit."

Ken winced, and called out before things could go any longer. "Hi you guys!"

Rosetta looked away from her roommate and broke into a charming and adorable smile. "Ken! Hello!"

"Hey Rosetta," Ken started, but Anna cut in. "Hey, you two, what're you arguing about?"

"Thanks a lot, Anna," Ken muttered. The tall girl looked at him questioningly. Meanwhile, the music had suddenly swelled again. Rosetta blinked. "Where's the concert?"

"We live to together," Yuri sang suddenly. Rosetta shrugged, and chimed in with the musical explanation of their tribulations.

"We're close as people can get."

"We've been the best of buddies...by which we mean we've shared a mutual professional respect for-" Yuri explained.

"Don't editorialize," Rosetta snapped, then smiled sweetly again. "Ever since the day we met!"

Yuri shot the tiny French girl a look. "So she knows lots of ways to make me really upset!"

"Moi?"

"Oh, every day is an aggravation!"

Rosetta frowned. "Come on, that's an exaggeration!"

Yuri turned to face her head on and leaned over threateningly. Somewhere, thousands of evil!Yuri fan girls sighed with joy. "You leave your clothes out-"

"So?"

"You put your feet on my chair."

Rosetta crossed her arms and sang right back at him challengingly. "That's nothing. You spend two hours every morning ironing your hair!"

Fan girls across the nation gasped, scandalized, while Anna cracked up and Ken covered a smile with his hand. Yuri fumed, but managed to keep his cool. "You make that very small apartment we share a hell."

"So do you!" Rosetta looked heavenward. "That's why I'm in hell, too."

"It sucks to be me-"

"No! It sucks to be me!"

"It sucks to be me," Anna chimed in cheerfully, before they all chorused the same thing again in unison.

"Is there anybody here it doesn't suck to be?" they chorused. "It sucks to be me."

Anna whipped a top hat out of nowhere and began to shuffle across the sidewalk. "Ba-da ba-da-baa...."

"Ba-da ba-da-baaa," Rosetta joined in, spinning into the dance.

The two young men looked at each other, then towards the homeless musicians that had somehow managed to migrate to their street without them noticing earlier, shrugged, and joined in. "Ba-da ba-da-baaa-ba!"

A percussionist hitting a rather expensive glock looked over at one of the woodwind players. "We'd better get hired after this!"

The flautist nodded, being incapable of speaking with an instrument glued to her lips, and winked as the four young performers continued their perfectly choreographed spontaneous dance number. A head peeked out of a window in the building across the street and a young man yelled down at them, "Get a job, you losers!"

Every instrumentalist with the proper fingering flicked their middle fingers upward and ignored him.

After another four bars, the door to the apartment complex opened and a young girl with strawberry blonde hair in two long pigtails stepped outside. She blinked, and turned towards Anna. "Why everyone dancing?" she asked in a halting, fake Asian accent.

"Because," Rosetta explained simply, "our lives suck!"

"Dancing about it doesn't make much sense," Yuri admitted, "but there was music and so..."

All four shrugged, and Mia wrinkled her nose. "You think that suck? I hear you correctly?"

"When did you get a Japanese accent, Mia?" Anna asked suddenly.

Mia ignored her and jumped right in on cue. "I coming to this country for opportunity. Try to work in quaint Dutch deli...but I speak Japanese!"

As everyone knows, despite the fact that the main minority population in LA is Hispanic and the United States is quite willfully stubborn about speaking any language other than English for the most part, and despite the fact that of all the Kaleido Stage members, only one Sora Naegino was from Japan, for some reason they all spoke perfect, unaccented Japanese. It made things quite difficult for Mia back in Holland sometimes.

"But with hard work I earn two masters degrees," Mia continued, "in choreography! And computer programming! But I have no clients, and I have an _unemployed fiancé_," she sang pointedly, "and we have _lots of bills to pay!_"

"Wait..." Yuri stared at Mia in confusion. "You're engaged? To who?"

Anna flung out her hands and sent him a,_ Hello? Right here?_ look. "Obviously!"

Rosetta smirked at her roommate smugly. "Really, Yuri, they're only the most obvious couple in the series."

The chief oboist, who had started the entire singing dancing nightmare, took advantage of the prolonged rest to throw her remaining shoe at the crowd. "Shh!"

Mia took a deep breath. "It suck to be me."

The musicians struck up the tune again.

"It suck to be me."

Windows all up and down the street slammed closed in frustration.

"I say it sucka sucka sucka sucka sucka sucka sucka sucka sucka sucka sucka sucka suck! It suck to be me!" Mia finished with a flourish.

Ken looked around nervously. "Can we say that without being sued?"

"Technically." Mia's voice returned to normal. "As long as we sing it, it should be fine."

"We read that somewhere," Anna confirmed.

"Oh."

"Wow!"

All eyes turned to the other side of the street, where Sora had finally made it to their building, having managed to take four minutes to walk the remaining block and a half. Her eyes shone. "That is so cool! Are you part of a show?"

"Not really," Rosetta said, eyeing the new girl suspiciously.

"It's kind of a spontaneous thing," Ken explained as a red flush crept up into his face.

Sora frowned. "But...then how do you all know the words?"

"Convenient plot hole," Mia said, reverting to the bad Asian accent. "Why you all way down here?"

"Oh! Well..." Sora fumbled in her pockets for a piece of paper. "I was looking for the Kaleido Stage, but I think I got lost somewhere, and then I heard more people singing and decided to come see what was up." She glanced up at the building. "Oh, this looks nice! Is there anything for rent? I should find somewhere to sleep, I don't have a hotel."

Ken's face was now approximately the color of a large cherry. "You, ah, should ask the superintendent. She can help you out." He quickly turned towards the building and cleared his throat. "Sara! Are you in?"

"Haaaaiiii!" A head popped up from one of the balconies and a woman wearing a karate gi and headband waved at everyone on the street below. "What is it?"

Sora's mouth dropped open and her face lit up in awe. "Oh wow, it's Sara from the Kaleido Stage! She sings in every show! I saw her once with my parents!"

Sara looked at her in surprise and waved. "Yes, that's me! How are...oh!" She scanned the annoyed gazes of the army of street musicians that had assembled outside her building. "Was that my cue? Oops!"

She smiled as if nothing had happened and waited for the melody to come back around before beginning. "I'm Sara Muir, you've heard of me before. I used to sing on stage but never wanted any more!" She spread her hands to indicate Sora and the entire assembled group. "So now I'm broke and here you are, outside of my door...and I'm here, the superintendent, performing for yooooou..."

"It sucks to be you," the four inhabitants chorused.

"How dull," Yuri sniffed.

"It sucks to be you..."

"Odd solo," Rosetta observed.

"Well, actually, it's not that bad." Sara leaned over the railing and ran a hand over her hair self-consciously. "It pays well enough and I never really cared about being famous as long as I could sing, and I sometimes get jobs at parties and restaurants and things so I'm happy here!"

There was an awkward pause as everyone looked at the musicians. They shrugged, and went back to playing. With a shrug of their own, the singers looked back at Sara. "Whatever you say...on Avenue K!"

"Sucks to be you," the girls sang as Sora joined in the simple dance number.

"On Avenue K," the boys continued, somehow managing to sound like there were four or more of them instead of just two.

"Sucks to be me!"

"On Avenue K..."

"Sucks to be us," the girls finished as the boys joined in, "but not when we're together...we're together here on Avenue K! We live on Avenue K, and here we'll stay!"

Everyone found a partner and leaned against their back. "Till we move away...we live on Avenue K!"

"Obviously," Yuri commented.

"We live on Avenue K."

"You'll like it here," Rosetta said as she wrapped her arms around Sora's waist, "you'll see."

"We live on Avenue K."

"I'll be down with your keys in a minute!" Sara called, and karate-kicked her way back inside.

"Welcome," everyone chorused triumphantly, "to Avenue K!"

As the echoes of music faded into the air, Ken took Sora's arm shyly, not meeting her eyes. "I-I'll take you to your room," he stammered nervously. "I'm...ah, Ken. Ken Robbins."

Sora broke into a huge grin. "Thank you, Ken!" She grabbed her suitcase again and followed him inside. "Do you always start singing like that? I've never done it before, but I tried my best...."

Anna followed them inside with her gaze. "He's got a real love at first sight complex," she observed.

"Well, of course," Rosetta sighed, "she's so sweet and inspiring and cute and-"

Yuri rolled his eyes heavenward, and she glared at him before stalking back inside. Anna and Mia followed suit, Anna questioning Mia the whole way.

"So, seriously, when did you get the accent? You're not even Japanese, and you never had one before..."

There was silence on the now-empty streets. As time passed and it became apparent that no one was even going to throw a few coins at the shabby instrumentalists, much less hire them out for anything, the small contingent of homeless musicians simultaneously decided that the best course of action would be to march through the streets of LA and riot in protest. The riots lasted for a good two years, and deals were finally reached after the fiftieth death by flute bludgeoning, but no one ever made the connection. Tourists are oblivious like that.


	2. Scene Two

_Author's Note: A few people have asked me what I was on when I wrote this. To which I reply...you can't have any anyway! P_

**Scene Two:  
****If You Were Gay, Instead of Being the Most Straight Character in the Series...**

Yuri relaxed back in his chair with a look of smug contentment on his face. An afternoon all alone, he thought to himself gleefully. His most annoying roommate had left for the day hours earlier, gushing something about showing the new girl around their area of town or some such thing…whatever it was, he didn't expect her to be back for hours and that suited him perfectly well. Exactly how they had ended up sharing an apartment was still beyond him. They'd never liked each other much. They'd both had many other people they could have moved in with.

Rosetta simply dismissed the question whenever it came up as a glitch in the plot matrix. Whatever that meant. Yuri officially was never attempting to have a conversation with a French person ever again after that one.

At that moment in time, however, the important part was that the girl was gone and Yuri had the apartment to himself, the entire day, all alone, with nothing to bother him while he read his newest book: Ruling the World with Style: A Guide to Getting Your Way Without Anyone Ever Suspecting a Thing, by a Mister Tohma Seguchi. Yuri needed a full afternoon to get through the book…for some reason, every single book in the local bookstore was in Japanese and despite being a mysteriously fluent speaker, Yuri had never had any reason to need to read the language, after all. The translating took quite a bit of time, but it was worth. Yuri got the feeling he might need to have some inside knowledge at some point in the future should he ever get the crazy desire to take over a circus troupe and remake it as his own without anyone noticing until it was too late.

It was a strangely specific hypothetical scenario, but Yuri thought it best to be prepared just in case.

As the Russian acrobat settled back against the couch with a sigh, the door burst open. "'Alo again!"

Yuri glared over the top of his book, his voice dripping disdain. "Hello, Ros…who are they?"

"Who, these three?" Rosette gestured at the three scruffy performers standing behind her clutching their instruments. "No idea. They were being attacked on the streets, poor things! Something about crossing a picket line I think, but never mind. What are you wearing?" she asked abruptly with a confused expression on her face.

Yuri glanced down at himself momentarily. "You were supposed to be out. I'm more comfortable shirtless."

The three musicians looked around in surprise at the chorus of far off shrieks that suddenly filled the air at Yuri's statement of attire. Rosetta and Yuri didn't seem to notice. It was like white noise to them by now.

"You don't mind if they stay, do you?" Rosetta chirped. "We have an extra room and I don't think they need to eat!"

"What extra room?" Yuri demanded with a sigh.

"The one through the plot hole in the corner." Rosetta waved the three musicians in and beamed at them. "Don't worry. No one will hurt you here. And you don't have to pay any rent. Yuri's covering it anyway."

"You have a trust fund, you know," her roommate pointed out with a frown.

"Yes," Rosetta replied sweetly, "but I just brought us home free entertainment so I should be exempt from rent."

"I have no desire to listen to oboes and banjos."

"Actually, we play clarinet," one of the musicians corrected as she and her friend held up the instruments in question.

Yuri sighed and shook his head. "Rosetta, I would like to get back to reading now."

"Of course," the girl replied with false sweetness. "Go right on ahead."

Yuri closed his eyes gratefully. "Thank you."

At last, the blonde Russian returned to his book. Rosetta, meanwhile, curled up on the floor behind the couch, leaning back against it and watching as her new personal musicians marveled at the practice area of their apartment. "Sora doesn't have her apartment set up yet. We could offer to let her practice here sometimes, don't you think?"

Yuri didn't answer, but one of the clarinetists turned to look at her. "Who's Sora?"

"She just moved in," Rosetta sighed dreamily. "She had to leave in the middle of our trip around town, but she's really so much fun to be around…"

The other clarinetists played through a short lick that sounded an awful lot like the opening bars of a famous song from an overrated date movie three decades out of date, and Rosetta giggled. Yuri looked up from his book, waited for another sound to intrude on his reading, and when no one played anything else, he went back to the pages once more.

Rosetta was studying the three musicians carefully. "Hey," she asked suddenly, "what else can you all play?"

"Not much," the banjo player admitted. "There isn't a lot of music out there for two clarinets and a banjo."

"At least not that we know," the younger of the clarinetists added. "There's a book of songs for that trio, but it was banned from publication."

"Why?" Rosetta asked.

"It wasn't PC enough or something. Something to do with insulting a great big black lesbian god who doesn't exist. We don't know the details, musicians don't rate access actual new sources."

Rosetta pondered this for a moment. "Makes sense to me. Can you improvise something?"

"I hate to be rude," Yuri pointed out as he sat up abruptly, "but I _am_ still trying to read!"

Rosetta rolled her eyes and winked at the musicians. The banjo player snickered, and the older clarinetists played a short comedic run. Yuri pressed the book up against his face and tried to ignore them.

It didn't work. The other clarinetist joined in on the repeated lick, and as Rosetta giggled, the banjo player added his own line. The red-haired diabolo prodigy sprang up and leaned over the edge of the couch, poking at her roommate's arm excitedly. "Hey! Hey, Yuri? Are you listening?"

Yuri didn't move the book from his face. "No."

"Hmmm?" Rosetta frowned thoughtfully, and then a slow grin spread over her face. When the trio behind her restarted the repeated line again, she sang low just over Yuri's face.

"If you were gay…"

Yuri let his book fall from his fingers. "What?!?"

"That'd be okay," Rosetta continued with a smile. "I mean, cuz, hey, I like you anyway."

"No, you don't," Yuri protested.

Rosetta paid him no mind. "Because you see, if it were me, I would feel free to say that I was gay! But," she sang hastily, "I'm not gay."

The young girl turned back to the musicians with a smile. "Hey, nice job you guys! Very nice! I like this, it's catchy…"

"Rosetta," Yuri repeated firmly, "what was that about exactly?"

"Going with the music, Yuri. It's called improvising. Sora's teaching me all about it." Rosetta sighed happily. "She's so nice about it."

"What was that about you being straight a minute ago?" Yuri mumbled. Rosetta's head snapped around and she stood over him with her arms crossed. He ignored her.

Rosetta stared.

Yuri picked his book up and turned another page.

A moment later, a clarinet began to blow right in his ear.

"Oh for…_what?"_

Rosetta beamed. "If you were queer…"

Yuri groaned. "This is not happening."

"I'd still be here."

"And right now I wish you weren't!"

"Year after year," Rosetta caroled as she pressed a hand to heart dramatically, "because you're dear to me."

"You don't even like me," Yuri tried to interrupt, "and I don't particularly like you either."

"And," the girl continued as if he hadn't said a word, "I know that you would accept me, too…"

"I don't accept you now. I want to read."

"If I told you today, 'Hey, guess what? I'm gay!' But," she added once more, "I'm not gay."

Yuri sighed and muttered something about denial, but just then the tempo of the song picked up a catchy, dance-worthy groove, and Rosetta took advantage of it, soft-shoeing across the floor of their apartment. "I'm happy just being with you!"

Yuri found himself wondering if killing street musicians actually counted as murder.

"So what should it matter to me what you do in bed with guys?"

"What I…You're the one flirting with our new, _female_ neighbor!" Yuri shouted. "I'm probably the last person in this apartment complex you should be saying this to?"

"Probably," Rosetta agreed, "but what's your point?" She raised her voice gleefully once more. "If you were gay…"

Yuri covered his face. "This is a nightmare."

"I'd shout hooray!"

"I am not listening," he muttered.

"And here I'd stay," Rosetta sang gaily, "but I wouldn't get in your way."

"You're in my way right now!"

"You can count on me," she continued with a sweep of her arms, "to always be beside you every day, to tell you, 'It's okay! You were just born that way! And as they say, it's in your DNA…' you're gay!" she finished grandly as Yuri shouted over the cacophony of musical sound.

"You know that I am not gay! This is ridiculous!"

The musicians reached the end of their impressive eighth note runs and paused expectantly. Rosetta held up a single finger and waggled it with a smile. "If you _were_ gay."

The band finished with a flourish as Rosetta spun on one foot to turn and applaud them. "Brava! Brava! Oh, you guys are good at this! I might have to keep you!"

Yuri rubbed at his temples with a slight groan. "Rosetta?"

With a small hop, the girl turned to face him again with a smug grin on her face. "Yes, Monsieur Killian?"

"When, exactly," Yuri asked in a voice that dripped venom from every word, "did the drummer and drum set get in here?"


End file.
